Let’s face it: the overall design choices made by the MySpace developers are like daggers in the eyes of Allah. Tom needs to hire Jeffrey Zeldman, and fast.

There are a number of one-stop shopping sites for MySpace codes that will serve to beautify the atrocity, but there’s only so much you can do with triple-nested tables used for page layout before, as a designer, you get woozy and nauseous. Each day as web designers stumble onto the site they weep openly. I know I did.

Is Ghetto A Design Choice? Yes, yes it is. In the comments there’s a post from a downtrodden MySpace dev who cites Tom:

In a direct quote from Tom “I want the design to be ghetto simplistic so that everyone can use it.”

Kudos, Tom. Mission accomplished. It’s also so ghetto simplistic that anyone can b0rk it with with completely insane design choices. “I think yellow text over this golden sunset background will present a compelling challenge to my friends.” “Alpha blending is awesome! I’m going use it everywhere!”

Fortunately someone was kind enough to throw together a Firefox Greasemonkey script that removes the atrocity and restores profiles to the simple, generic but readable default. Check it out, and thanks, Derk. That, along with the Firefox AdBlock extension, makes MySpace at least palatable if not enjoyable.

Notice how I didn’t leave any indication that I actually have a MySpace account. I prefer to leave that dark aspect of my life far from the spotlight of my heavily-trafficked blog. Also, I think it’s what Fibonacci would do.

I’d say I’m going to spend my Christmahannukwanza sulking and drowning my sorrows, but I’d be a liar. I’m going to a huge party with some of the best DJs in the northwest. Take that, doubters.

It’s been an intersting month, I’ll say that month. While my plans for Santarchy went unrealized, I did learn that it went off with a bang in New Zealand (Thanks, Gabe!). I’m going on a trip, I went snowboarding and had a blast, I’m single (and ready to mingle. What!?) I’m making plans to play minister and, by the powers vested in me by the State of Oregon, marry my friends on New Year’s Day. What else could possibly happen to turn my life upside down? Time will only tell.

I remember hearing about Powers Of Ten, and I finally tracked it down last night. It’s frickin’ amazing.

Also, WAR! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Except insane videos of people burning alive, ships sinking, and planes getting shot down. Really puts things in perspective when you’re up to your neck in cubicles.

A nice chat with Google’s Larry Page, circa 2038 (eight years after their acquisition of Microsoft).

Excerpt:

You mentioned employees, and their rights. What is your stance on robot rights?

This is a complex issue, and one that hasn’t been really solved during the last decade, in my opinion. We apply the Marissa Test named after our ex-User Experience Vice President. Our experts will tell the machine a really sad story and if the machine starts to cry, we will give it “human” rights like payment, off-days and so on. By the way, they don’t like to be called robots…

Really? Why not?

They like to be called robotic persons, that’s all. Some of these machines, or persons, can be quite sensitive. It’s part of our philosophy to support this.

Check it out.

I find this interesting because last night on my walk home I pondered the idea of creating a truly permanent data storage media. Something that could survive the collapse of the universe, existing outside space-time. Then I saw a post on BoingBoing that piqued my interest. It led me to:

The medium (of the universe) is the message > Accelerando > Calculating God > Ultimate Fate of the Universe.

If nothing else it’s certainly an interesting reading list. Whether or not this satisfies my criteria of surviving a big crunch and big bang is

I was dismayed last weekend when I mistakenedly thought I had missed the Santa Rampage. Fortunately, I was wrong! Santarchy is happening this Saturday at noon at the Saturday Market. I learned this on my morning ride to work reading the Portland Mercury-Mercury (renamed because it’s now owned by The Dandy Warhols’ Courtney Taylor-Taylor). As an added bonus, the Merc-Merc is reporting that Walgreens is practically giving Santa costumes at a price of $10. Join me for Santastic fun!

Update: Check out last year’s Santacon! The Santarchy Archives has more.

Despite my meager cyclist credentials (Yes, I own a bike. Two, in fact! Have I ridden it in the last, bittlerly cold, month?) The Fat Cyclist steadfastly gives me linkage on his blog. Indeed, he’s managed to get himself cred on Technorati as The Most Authoritative Blogger on the Subject of Bikes(!) In the world! He’s even sponsored! Not bad for an MSN Spaces site. I had originally derided him for this, but I take it all back. It’s obviously working. I’ll have to look into migrating my sad little WordPress ride to the new Spaces hotness. The truly dismal part about the whole situation is he weighs less than I do. C’est la vie, I never claimed to be an athlete. Argh.

I take comfort in the fact that my roomates, accomplished and dedicated cyclists that they are, have no linkage from Fatty most authoritative blogger on bikes in the entire world. I like to remember this, triumphantly, as they’re dropping me like a bad habit on the climbs.

Trimming the hedges.

Clear-cutting.

Defoliating.

Whatever euphemism you like, the Willamette Week’s got an article about it. Nice.

Yesterday started with the sound of my alarm, the opening beats in The Beastie Boys’ Shadrach, waking me up at 8:00 AM. Unlike a typical workday, I had no desire to hit the snooze button and enjoy a few more moments of warmth in my bed (although the electric blanket presented a compelling case). I leaped out of bed and immediately commenced getting my things together. I checked the ski report and learned that there was no new snow, just fast hard pack and blue skies in the forecast.

After Michael’s last attempt at getting to Timberline, we were a bit nervous. However, there was really nothing to fear. The ride up the mountain in Bridget’s 4Runner was uneventful. Bridget, who was celebrating the one-week anniversary of getting her braces removed, was all smiles. Indeed, we all were. Laura, unfortunately, was fulfilling her solemn duty to the state by being a juror for the day. Laura did not feel a deep fulfilling satisfaction in being a juror knowing that she was missing out on snowboarding. I couldn’t blame her, and offered some advice (a sip of syrup of ipecac) to help her get out of the situation. In the end Laura decided that she’d attend, and so it was Michael, Bridget, and myself.

We arrived at the lodge at around 11:00 AM and found a parking space that was literally spitting distance from the building. It was a stroke of luck. We picked up our passes and with little delay we were sitting on the lift chair, giddy as schoolchildren. I was in particularly good spirits since I was taking a vacation day and otherwise would’ve been at work.

We got a full sampling of the mountain my mid-day, and Bridget’s friends from work arrived, still nursing hangovers from the company’s Christmas party. We proceeded to Stormin’ Norman, a lift that took us to the terrain park and the table tops. Table tops are jumps with a long, sloping ramp punctuated by a lip which propels you skyward, followed by a steep ramp to allow you to smoothly land your jump and maintain your momentum. Between the ramps there is a flat area. The idea is to pick up enough speed to propel yourself over the flat area and land on the descent in a fluid motion, and if you can do an inverted aerial along the way that’s nice too. There are four or five sets of table tops in the terrain park, each having two sides: a regular side, which gives you what I suppose is a ‘normal’ amount of air going off the lip. That’s the right side. The left side is ‘extra spicy’ and has a steeper slope for producing greater vertical lift. Some would call this ‘Xtreme’.

Michael and I were on our third or fourth run through the table tops when we got a little too close for comfort. Michael was downhill from me, so I veered off to the left (’extra spicy’) table top. I speed checked in a meager attempt to compensate for the fact that I was going off the bigger ramp.

I didn’t speed check myself enough. It was moments later that I thrown into the sky, in another one of those frozen-in-time moments. Looking down at all the people below me, I glanced over the horizon and realized I could see California, and a hint of Mexico.

This was followed by something similar to what my childhood stuffed animal must have felt when I put it in the dryer. Tumbling over and over down the hill, it’s surprising how much abuse the human body can absorb without any serious damage. I stood up, cleared most of the snow out of my goggles, and put them back on. A quick check of fingers and toes, arms and legs revealed nothing broken. I stood up and continued down the hill, a bit more cautious but not significantly so.

If I were kidnapped by terrorists and forced to describe yesterday’s trip in a single word it would be: fast. I mentioned to my roomates that I think I set my personal land speed record on a snowboard. It’s frustrating not to have a speedometer to see just exactly how fast I’m going, but for the sake of my loved ones it’s probably best that I don’t. I don’t think they’d appreciate me informing them that I’ve been shooting down a mountain at 60 MPH or whatever my terminal velocity might happen to be. Since I don’t know, I can only inform them that I’ve been going “fast”.

Without going into details, boring or otherwise, I’m single now. Argh.